Too busy

Homeschool day 19 of 180

Sometimes people ask us what we do in our homeschool. Most of the time they are just curious or being polite. Of course we do the math, grammar, writing, science, history, spelling, Spanish, and cover all kinds of different academic subjects. Along with that we do lots of other interesting things. The kids practice their musical instruments every day and go to private music lessons once per week. They both perform in recitals, competitions, and other performances. They go to swimming lessons a couple of days per week. We make trips to the aquarium, zoo, wild animal park, beaches, museums, and things like that once or twice per month. Christian is in cub scouts. We do extended project work on research papers, magazines, and craft projects. Kelly is going to write a book this year. Christian is learning how to program in C#; we have not found him a project yet to go with that, but we have some good ideas. Lorena starts a calculas class this semester, will start jury duty in October and November, runs the household, and is planning to start a business after the first of the year. I work full time and have a side business that takes additional responsibilities. Add fellowship meetings, gospel meetings, bible studies, and everything associated with that and there is not a whole lot of time left for anything else.

The only way we can get everything done is by setting priorities. Homeschool has to be high on the priority list or not everything would get done. The kids get up in the morning at about 7:00 am. Before breakfast, they are scheduled to make their beds and straighten up their rooms, practice their instruments for 45 minutes, memorize their bible verses, and then start into their academic subjects until breakfast is ready about 8:45. They are usually well into their academic subjects by 8:30 as they watch the neighbor kids head out to catch the local government school bus at a little before 8:30. The kids work on individual subjects until 12:30 or 1:00 when they break for a half an hour for lunch. After lunch, they continue with their individual work and do things together like read aloud, perform science experiments, and do arts and crafts projects. In the afternoons on Mondays and Wednesdays they go to swimming lessons. On Tuesdays they go to Kelly’s piano lesson. On Thursdays they go to Christian’s Guitar lesson. They study on the way to lessons and on the way home. They generally finish with their academic work between 3:00 and 4:30 in the afternoon when the neighbor kids are getting off the bus from school. Lorena supervises and helps the kids as the need it all day long.

I usually get home from work about 5:00 pm. The kids play from when they finish their work until dinner at about 6:30. I work on correcting their work from the time I get home until dinner. After dinner, we spend an additional hour or two reading aloud together, going over new material for the next day, testing, doing spelling work, etc. It works for us. After having done all this for three years, I do not know how the government school kids learn anything at all. Most of the neighbor kids spend an hour on the bus to and from school plus several hours in recesses, lunch, standing in line, and just waiting for attention from the teacher (hopefully) or an unqualified teacher’s aide. In addition to the greater amount of time with better supervision that our kids spend in school each day, they also go to school more days than our local government schools. Ostensibly, the schools are in sessions with kids on the premises 175 days this year with the kids in school between around 9:00 and around 3:15. We do 180 days per year, not including weekend and summer field trips and projects.